1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for referencing plan-related entries in different files in a planning program for project planning, and for determining and optically reproducing any time delays in the project implementation.
2. Description of the Related Art
The timing or the presetting of a nominal schedule for a project of greater or lesser size, possibly comprising a large number of individual projects, requires considerable planning effort. Such plans are produced in widely differing fields, for example for building construction, for the production of industrial plants or machines, etc. It is invariably necessary to coordinate individual time schedules with one another, and to produce a higher-level nominal plan. Suitable software programs are being increasingly used for this purpose, and these allow planning to be carried out on a computer facility. One frequently used program is the planning program known by the trade name “Microsoft Project”.
This program is used to plan the entire project and various individual projects on the basis of separate files, in which case the individual plans can to this extent also be “processed” and this can also be recorded, for which purpose, for example, the weekly or monthly working hours carried out on an individual project are entered. However, this does not provide the planner with any control whatsoever as to the extent to which the schedule which he has predetermined in the nominal plan can be kept to at all, that is to say whether the various individual projects, whose implementation is mutually independent, can be started, and also completed, at the required times. It is thus impossible for the planner to quickly produce any desired overview of the status quo and to identify any implementation delays, irrespective of whether these have occurred or can be predicted. However, this would be important since, if early knowledge of any delay that has occurred or is possible is available, it is still possible to take measures in order to compensate, or to minimize this delay, which intrinsically leads to considerable damage.
A method for monitoring, controlling and/or optimizing of process and/or task project plans is known from the German Patent document DE 199 11 699 A1. In this method, the actual state is determined on the basis of already recorded process and/or task project plans, and a nominal process and/or nominal task project plan is likewise recorded. A modified process and/or task plan is then produced by the program. However, this method does not make it possible to display discrepancies or delays in a simple manner.
A method for commercial control of locally organized financial units is proposed in German Patent Document DE 196 45 654 A1. This provides for nominal planning entries and actual entries to be displayed at the same time. However, this has the disadvantage that problems such as time overruns cannot be seen directly.
A test set for a number of measurement points is known from German Patent Document DE 38 12 101 A1. The test set has means for setting a nominal value and a comparative display for the nominal value and the measured actual value.